Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Does anybody love projects like I do? I know growing up, and still, I loved getting a new project to take home and work on. There is just something about being able to be as creative as you want. The only problem with always bringing home new projects for school, was that my parents would say every time "Another project! How many projects is this teacher going to give this year, she has already given...." I don't want any parent or guardian saying that about me as teacher. I will try to only hand out a few, but I will definitely incorporate them into my classroom.

I would like to incorporate small group projects into my classroom. The project would have to be limited because as an elementary teacher, one can only hold their attentions so long. Having a small group of 3-4 students would be perfect to work on a poster for the 100th day of school or something like that.

Other than having a class blog, I would like to incorporate other technology. I would really love to have a SMART board interactive whiteboard to be able to have the students come up and work directly on the board without having to worry about getting dry erase marker all over them. Also, having a SMART board would allow us to have internet connection right there instead of one person at a time at a computer. Other technology that I would like to have would definitely be using Skype. I would love to be able to open the doors for my students to be able to learn how other people form around the world live.

In class, I always seemed to understand things better when I learned with hands on learning, for example, learning to add and subtract with chips, trying to grow a bean plant for science, and playing spell-it-out volleyball for spelling. Most of the memories that I have of school are of when I was learning with hands on activities. I hope to be able to teach my students with hands one learning.

Here are some examples of what I want my class blog to look like. All of these are really good, I have mentioned them before in my podcast, but the students seem so happy and they all want to be involved. That's how I want my students to feel. Please check them out:

When I was growing up and going to school, I never took the time to sit and think how much time and effort my teachers took to plan lessons, projects, and activities. Now, that I am having to take that time to think about what I would like to do in my classroom, I realize how hard my teachers worked outside of the classroom. I now have a newfound respect for them.

In a perfect world, I would have all of the best things for my classroom, money could buy. I'm talking about having a completely SMART room, complete with computers for every student and me being technologically efficient. We all know that this dream is not reality. In reality, our school systems are budget crisis', students not being able to keep up with the curriculum, the economy, and teachers and staff are being handed pink slips left and right. Teachers are also facing the change in the students. These new students are all technologically literate and they need to learn with a computer. All of these reasons combined, gave me the idea to try and come up with a few ideas about what I would want to do in my classroom on a budget.

I would like to have at least one computer so that we could have a class blog for the students to be able to post some of their work on to there, and also so that I could post all test, homework, and classwork in case a student or parent needed to know. Instead of having posters on the walls, I would like for each student to color a whole sheet of paper of whatever he/she wanted to draw. After that I would like to hang them on my wall to display their artwork, so that they can be proud of what they have done. Another idea that I had, was to have my student Skype other students from anywhere in the world , so that they will have the ability to connect and learn from others. It is a free service, so it would be very easy to manage and do. One of my last ideas that I had was to teach my students to "go green." We could have a class project of recycling everything that we use to see how much garbage we throw away. These are all just a few ideas that I was tossing around in my head, I would love any and all suggestions!